The World

Khrushchev had been reading translations of articles by the powerful Washington Post columnist Walter Lippman, who had suggested a solution: removal of American missiles from Türkiye in return for removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba. No journalist in history has ever been so influential. With this idea, Khrushchev sent a second less conciliatory letter to JFK, who dispatched his brother to discuss the plan with the Soviet ambassador. As the president relaxed somewhat, Special Assistant Dave Powers summoned his teenage lover, the intern Mimi. Yet though he chatted to her, JFK’s ‘expression was grave … even his quips had a half-hearted, funereal tone’: ‘I’d rather my children were red than dead,’ he said before sending her alone off to bed while he watched a movie, Roman Holiday.

The leaders were moving towards the deal, yet soldiers and weapons were still moving towards war. Khrushchev now received Castro’s letter: ‘the imperialists might initiate a nuclear strike against the USSR’, suggested Fidel, so the ‘moment would be right’ to launch nuclear strikes on America. ‘However difficult and horrifying this decision may be, there is I believe no other recourse.’ It remains the most terrifying letter ever written by a leader. Khrushchev was horrified: ‘When this was read to us, we, sitting in silence, looked at one another for a long time.’

‘You proposed we carry out a nuclear first strike,’ he wrote to Castro. ‘This wouldn’t be a simple attack but the start of a thermonuclear world war.’

‘We knew we’d be exterminated … should a thermonuclear war break out,’ responded Castro, ‘and if such an event occurred, what would one do with the madmen who unleashed the war?’

Soviet troops were permitted to resist with anything non-nuclear – and they shot down an American plane and killed a pilot. Bobby told the Soviet ambassador that his brother could withdraw the Turkish missiles in ‘4–5 months’ but ‘can’t say anything public’, adding, ‘Time is of the essence.’ This was no exaggeration: off Bermuda, US ships dropped non-lethal depth charges to signal to a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine, the B-59, that it should surface. Yet the officers of B-59

had had no contact with Moscow and only knew of negotiations from American radio. Around midday on 27 October, Captain Savitsky, believing the two superpowers were at war, ordered the launch of a T5 nuclear missile: ‘Prepare [nuclear] torpedo tube 1 and 2 for firing!’ But his commander, Akhipov, using the sub as a command centre, overruled him and convinced him to surface, where an American ship flashed its searchlights in a friendly gesture. Savitsky understood and ordered: ‘Stop preparations for firing.’ It was the closest the world came to nuclear war.

At his dacha at Novo-Ogarevo outside Moscow (later Vladimir Putin’s residence), Khrushchev persuaded his comrades, Mikoyan and his protégé, the titular head of state Leonid Brezhnev, to take JFK’s offer of Cuba for Türkiye: ‘To save humanity, we should retreat.’

In Washington, JFK was so relieved ‘I feel like a new man,’ he told Powers. ‘Do you realize we had an air strike all arranged for Tuesday. Thank God it’s all over.’ But when Khrushchev informed Havana, Castro was incandescently defiant. Khrushchev suggested ‘we offer friendly advice: show patience, restraint and more restraint’, and sent Mikoyan, even though his wife Ashken was dying in Moscow, to Havana, where he told Castro the missiles were going home. In private, Castro called Khrushchev a ‘bastard … asshole’, and ranted, ‘No cojones! No balls! Maricon! Homosexual!’ At a later meeting on 22 November, Castro refused to allow UN inspections and raged at Mikoyan: ‘We didn’t agree with the removal of the missiles … What do you think we are? A zero on the left, a dirty rag.’ Then he bid for nuclear weapons.

Castro: We took the risk … We were even prepared for a nuclear war …

Mikoyan: We were also prepared to make sacrifices for Cuba.

Castro: Doesn’t the Soviet Union transfer nuclear weapons to other countries?

Mikoyan: We’ve a law prohibiting the transfer of any nuclear weapon.

Castro: Would it be possible to leave the tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba …

Mikoyan: No, Comrade Fidel, it would not be possible.

Mikoyan learned his wife had died, and sent his son Sergo^* home to attend the funeral, which Khrushchev oafishly refused to attend himself: ‘I don’t like funerals, it’s not like attending a wedding is it?’ The ballistic weapons were removed, even the atom bombs and tactical nuclear weapons – the ones the Americans hadn’t known about.

The crisis was over.